Strong Interactions between Solitary Waves Belonging to Different Wave Modes

Strong interactions between weakly nonlinear long waves are studied. Strong interactions occur when the linear long wave phase speeds are nearly equal although the waves belong to different modes. Specifically we study this situation in the context of internal wave modes propagating in a density stratified fluid. The interaction is described by two coupled Korteweg-deVries equations, which possess both dispersive and nonlinear coupling terms. It is shown that the coupled equations possess an exact analytical solution involving the characteristic “sech²” profile of the Korteweg-deVries equation. It is also shown that when the coefficients satisfy some special conditions, the coupled equations possess an n-solition solution analogous to the Korteweg-deVries n-solition solution. In general though the coupled equations are found not to be amenable to solution by the inverse scattering transform technique, and thus a numerical method has been employed in order to find solutions. This method is described in detail in Appendix A. Several numerical solutions of the coupled equations are presented.